Sometimes, clients ask why do lawyers take so long to handle their case. There are usually a couple reasons why personal injury cases take so long.
It takes time to understand your injuries.
The human body and how it reacts to trauma is varied. Sometimes it can take months before the true nature of an injury manifests. Sometimes, less invasive or conservative treatment needs to be tried first. It would be bad for your case if you settled without knowing the full extent of your injuries. You need to get treatment and try to get better. That’s why most personal injury cases won’t settle for at least six months. That why the injury can stabilize and we can get a better idea what is in store for the future.
It takes time to negotiate with insurance companies.
Insurance companies and made up of different levels of decision makers. Sometimes the insurance adjuster taking the phone calls has limited authority to settle the case. Every move has to be overseen and supervised. So when the adjuster gets a packet of records and photos from an attorney, they need to review and analyze that packet. Then someone has to present that to other people in the insurance company before even making an offer. That whole process can take at least thirty days. And that is just for an offer. It sometimes has to happen every time there is a counter offer or new information in the case.
Lawyers take so long because litigation is slow.
Once the case is in litigation, the rules require lots of notice to the opposing side. Lawyers take so long because of the rules they have to follow. Cases are in litigation usually when a complaint is filed and the case and a judge is assigned. To be fair to the other side, another way of saying due process, the rules require that time passes allowing the other side to react to motions or requests etc. That way you can’t do something that would hurt the other side and not give them enough time to react. These rules help both sides prevent anything unfair from happening. The flip side is that it takes a long time to get anything done in litigation.
The best thing to do is to move on and forget about the case.
I know it may be hard to hear but the best thing to do is to live your life, move on and try to recover as much as you can on your own. Lawsuits and claims are going to move on their own timeline and don’t change because you have bills to pay or need the money. It is not a good idea to start day dreaming about what you are going to do with the money from a lawsuit or borrow money based on the case. The case will settle or go to trial then appeals and it could be years before anything happens. Try your best to move one and deal with the case when it comes up.
